School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Nottingham Emmanuel School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named The Nottingham Emmanuel School as their first choice did not get a place: 146 put it first and 125 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Nottingham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

21

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

146 first preferences for 177 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Nottingham Emmanuel School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Nottingham Emmanuel School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Nottingham as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Nottingham, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 226 of 1,149 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Nottingham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Nottingham ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

The Nottingham Emmanuel School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at The Nottingham Emmanuel School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 0.79 per place 128 first choices 163 places 2016/17 0.8 per place 144 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 138 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 168 first choices 179 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 180 first choices 205 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 181 first choices 209 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 215 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 218 first choices 185 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 187 first choices 185 places 2024/25 1 per place 195 first choices 195 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 151 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.82 per place 146 first choices 177 places
First preferences per place at The Nottingham Emmanuel School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 146 first preferences for 177 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Nottingham Emmanuel School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 163 128 127 0.79
2016/17 180 144 143 0.8
2017/18 179 138 136 0.77
2018/19 179 168 139 0.94
2019/20 205 180 162 0.88
2020/21 209 181 147 0.87
2021/22 178 215 155 1.21
2022/23 185 218 146 1.18
2023/24 185 187 146 1.01
2024/25 195 195 161 1
2025/26 179 151 132 0.84
2026/27 177 146 125 0.82

Places offered

177

in 2026/27

Named first choice

146

414 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

125 of 146

Offers to families outside the council

5%

8 of 177 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

923

102.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

23

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that The Nottingham Emmanuel School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures The Nottingham Emmanuel School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Nottingham Emmanuel School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,250 places 956 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,007 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,001 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 974 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 979 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 1,032 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,130 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,137 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,131 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,135 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,133 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Nottingham

Postcode NG2 7YF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139765).

Other contested secondary schools in Nottingham

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.